Control your self-service customer experience

Self-service can be an excellent option for your company and your consumers, but its important to first evaluate what benefit it brings, and for whom.

It is amazing to be able to use your iPhone as a boarding pass for air travel, walk through security, and get on a plane; or if new shoes arrive in the wrong size, fill out the online form, ship the package back for free and have the right size shoes returned in a few days. While many companies initially sought to save money through the introduction of self-service, customers have been empowered by the ease and control of the process. It can be a significant asset to your organizations Customer Experience.

Just as often, the opposite can be true: self-service can easily be a curse for a high-quality customer experience. It can also lead the customer through a maze with no identifiable solution to the problem, send them through a frustrating twenty-minute call center menu, or stick them with an interactive voice response system that doesnt understand their accent.

In his article, Are Customers Just Plain Fickle?, Barry Dalton makes the point that started it all: customer self-service is here to stay because high-tech costs much less than high-touch. I completely agree, but I also believe that companies, as always, need to take a proactive approach to self-service in order to ensure a great Customer Experience.

Without the right approach, self-service can severely hurt your organization and damage your customer relationships. Thus, I offer these three critical points for organizations that rely on self-service to help drive the business:

Let the customer choose.
Customers should be given a choice between self-service (e.g., the self-checkout line at the supermarket; placing product orders online) and traditional interactive service (e.g., the smiling duo of cashier and bagger; calling a friendly sales representative). Customers appreciate the control of self-service, the personal aspects of great person-to-person service, and the ability to choose which one they need  or want  at any given point.

Self-service should be easy.
Its imperative that your organizations self-service platform be simple and intuitive. Extremely detailed menu options may sound like a great, efficient idea to you, but the customer on the other end of the phone might find it more hassle than your product is worth. This example illustrates a company that falls on the naïve end of our Naïve to Natural orientation model, a model we developed to help identify how customer-centric a company is.

Dont rely exclusively on self-service.
Be careful. When you put all your eggs in the self-service basket, you can easily lose too much interaction with customers and commoditize your offering. Giving customers the option of direct interaction when they want it  like the agents who are available to help at an airlines self-check-in kiosks  adds value your customers will appreciate.

Colin Shaw is founder & CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the worlds first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four best-selling books. Beyond Philosophy provide consulting, specialized research & training from offices in Atlanta, Georgia and London, England. Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter